


when the stars and moon align just so

by crossingwinter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Centaurs, F/M, Loss of Limbs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 15:54:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21273776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: Songs spoke of red stars on nights that blood was shed.  Stars bled too when the great fell. There were no red stars tonight.  The stars did not bleed for Snoke.Would they bleed for Ben?She swallowed.Because despite his own words—that he served his master (master, as though he were a draft horse to be yoked and plow the fields of men), that he would give everything to his master, she had seen doubt in his eyes that night, three years ago, when the stars and moon had aligned just so.





	when the stars and moon align just so

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Trish47](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trish47/gifts).

> For Trish, who mentioned centaurs like a month ago and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since. Thanks for putting this weird Fantasia-ish au in my brain.
> 
> Thanks to Jeeno for beta-ing!

“And what of Kylo Ren?” Leia asked the question, her tail swishing, her face unreadable. But Rey still knew the question was truly  _ what of my son? _

“It is...unclear,” the scout replied, shifting back and forth on his hooves. Sweat dripped down his chest, and there was mud on his forelegs from how fast he’d run to bring them the news.

_ Snoke is dead. _

_ His herd has disbanded. _

_ Factions are making war with one another. _

Across the fire pit, Rey could see Finn and Rose whispering to one another. Her arm was around his waist, holding him close to her side. Though he claimed that he had never felt at home in Snoke’s herd, that he had known more enemies and rivals than friends, Rey was glad that Rose’s arm was around him, for she knew that twin to his curiosity and exhilaration, there would be a confused grief as well.

There was no comforting arm to wrap around Rey as Leia nodded down to the scout, her eyes a little blanker than usual. “Thank you,” she said. “My herd will see you groomed.” Then she turned away from the gathering around the firepit and they all knew the audience was disbanded.

Ordinarily, Rey would cross to where Finn and Rose were.

But instead she turned and went off into the darkness. When she broke the darkness beyond the reach of the fire pit, she sped up into a gallop, her heart racing in her chest, her lungs laboring, working herself so that if there was moisture on her face, it was surely sweat and not tears.

-

_ “Be wary,” Leia had warned her three years before when the stars aligned with the moon just so. It would be a meeting of herds, weapons and warfare put aside for a gathering, a testing, a reshuffling, where the young and unmounted might find someone to set stars shining in their eyes. They would love one another beneath the stars and moon aligned just so, fingers intertwined, and at the end of it, old herds would be broken, new herds would be made. _

_ “What of?” Rey asked, and Leia had looped her arm through Rey’s.  _

_ “You are strong,” Leia said kindly, “And you know yourself well. Forget neither if you see one who seems kind but stands for cruelty. You’ll regret it if you do.” _

_ And Rey had known it wasn’t a threat, but rather a prophecy—that she would hate herself if she lost herself. And so she had told Leia that she wouldn’t. She had promised herself that she would steer clear of Snoke’s herd, which sought power at the expense of what it meant to be centaur, what it meant to be more than man and more than horse—a finer and more refined beast than either alone.  _

_ She had faith in her heart. _

_ - _

When she reached the summit of the hill, she paced. The wind was fresher at the crest, and the darkness thinner. There were no greater hills to block the stars and moonlight, no shade from trees. Above there was only beauty.

Songs spoke of red stars on nights that blood was shed. Stars bled too when the great fell. There were no red stars tonight. The stars did not bleed for Snoke. 

_ Would they bleed for Ben? _

She swallowed.

Because despite his own words—that he served his master (master, as though he were a draft horse to be yoked and plow the fields of men), that he would give everything to his master, she had seen doubt in his eyes that night, three years ago, when the stars and moon had aligned just so.

-

_ He had seen her before she had seen him. She knew this because he approached her through the green, looming larger than any other she’d ever seen. _

_ His base was that of a strong black stallion, his torso was pale and rippling with muscle—a nightrider, who slept when the sun was strong. His eyes and hair were both dark and there was something about him that made her mouth go dry. She assumed it was fear, for only fear had ever made her mouth go dry before. (Later, she would learn that perhaps it was fear, but not of harm—fear of heartbreak, perhaps. Or fear of something she had never experienced before approaching her out of the cypress trees.) _

_ She had remained frozen to the spot as he’d circled her once, twice, his movements almost lazy.  _

_ “Are you afraid of me?” he had asked her; and Rey—who refused to admit fear to anything in her life—had replied, _

_ “You wish.” _

_ And his face had changed and it was as if a spell had been cast—or perhaps had been broken. Because his plush red lips split into a smile and his face softened and Rey took one step towards him, and then another. _

_ He had held out a hand for her to take, but she had brushed past him, her tail flicking, breaking out into a light canter.  _

_ And his laughter made her own lips widen into a smile as he gave chase. _

_ - _

The sun rose and set again and Rey paced. She paced through the hour of owl and lark, paced beneath stars and sunshine.

Finn brought her olives and dates on the second day. “You should eat,” he told her.

“Does he live?” she asked him.

“We’ve had no more news,” Finn replied. “But I suspect that if he lives, he’ll return here when the stars and moon align. It will be the easiest way for him to find a new herd if he fears for his safety.”  _ If he still cares for you,  _ Finn did not say.

She knew Finn had not understood her broken heart.

Chewie had sent a spear through Kylo Ren’s side, and Rey had cut his face in two, and yet here she mourned and fretted as though they were something more to one another than just a moment in a forest before he’d chosen his master and she had chosen her heart.

Finn had not understood, but he also had decided he didn’t need to and for that alone she loved him.

“Did he mount you?” Finn asked after a silence, and Rey looked at him sharply.

He had never once asked. He had not asked if they had kissed, did not know that they had held hands as they had wandered through the trees. It was not an abnormal thing to ask, she supposed. That was what one did, when the stars and moon aligned just so. It was just that it had taken Finn three years to ask.

“No,” she said looking away, out over the hills. “No, he didn’t.”

-

_ They settled by a rocky pooling in the river, tucking their legs under them. His arm wrapped around her waist, her head resting on his shoulder. _

_ She hadn’t realized how alone she’d felt until she’d met him.  _

_ He had given chase, and she had let him catch her in the end. She could go faster, but his legs were longer, and it was all a game, wasn’t it? She didn’t even really know why she made him run. (Later, in tears that he had chosen Snoke, she would realize it was that her parents had fled from her—she wanted someone to run towards her; and apparently he, too, had left her behind.) _

_ Her lips found his. Her hands stroked his chest; his cupped her breasts. Behind them, his rear hips stirred and her breath caught in her throat. _

_ “Do you want to?” he whispered to her and the bubbling river and the stars overhead. _

_ “Not just yet,” she replied and he settled again. They had a week, after all. There wasn’t a rush and Rey wasn’t used to just being held. She wanted to savor him holding her the way he was holding her, and she told him so. _

_ His lips brushed across her forehead. “I like the way you hold me too,” he replied simply. _

_ - _

Once Finn left, she went back to pacing.

It was easier to think on the sweeter moments, the ones where he held her and told her she mattered to him. And though she did not understand how someone could come to matter to someone else so quickly, he mattered to her too. That was what happened when the stars and moon aligned just so. It was easier to think of him holding her, and telling her that she wasn’t alone than it was to realize he was from Snoke’s herd, and that rather than leave the herd for a softer life, a peaceful life, he would prefer she chose harshness.

“He didn’t care for you,” she told the empty hilltop. An owl hooted in reply. “He wanted to own you, not to care for you.  _ Master _ .”

_ And what of my mother? Is she not her own kind of master?  _

_ She doesn’t control me. _

_ Doesn’t she? You won’t leave her?  _

_ I won’t leave myself. _

Tears dripped down her face. 

Overhead, the stars twinkled. The moon waxed. Soon, they would be aligned just so, and would he return? Would he want to?

And suddenly the exhaustion of several unsleeping days hit her and Rey settled herself beneath the cypresses and let herself sleep at last

-

_ She dreamed of him dappled in the light that filtered down through the leaves of trees on the first day they’d met.  _

_ She dreamed of him with blood from her knife dripping down his face, though that would come later, when he would snarl at her that she should still join him, and even the darkest corners of her mind that had wondered if he’d meant any of it had been satisfied that he had, in fact, cared for her. War had made more bitter their parting, but at least now he would always think of her when he caught his reflection in a pool of clear water. _

_ She dreamed of him at her back, giving chase, catching her in his arms, with his lips, releasing his laughter into her lungs and breaking the spell that kept it all locked away, their tails swishing back and forth, brushing one another’s legs. _

_ - _

She woke beneath the hot sun and it took her a moment to realize she wasn’t alone. 

_ Finn,  _ she thought at first, except Finn’s hoofbeats were never so heavy as the centaur on the other side of the trees, pacing back and forth. Finn also didn’t have a limp.

The only centaur she’d known to have such heavy hooves was…

She got to her feet, stretching her arms up over her head and stepping slowly out of the shade of the trees.

He was there—bruised and battered and scabbing. His face was a horrible mess of purpled flesh and cracking scabs and his front foreleg was badly bandaged, but he was there—alive and there.

“You’re all right,” Rey blurted out, stepping towards him. She reached for his hand and only when he lifted his arm to take it did she realize he didn’t have a hand anymore—just the stump of an arm, badly wounded. He had lost the fingers he’d twined with hers under the stars and moon shining just so. 

Tears filled her eyes and she stepped into the circle of his arms, holding his chest to hers, pulling his lips down to hers. “You’re alive.”

“Alive,” he agreed, swallowing. “I wanted to see you again. To see if you’d—”

“Ben,” she whispered and she didn’t let him keep talking, didn’t let him say whatever it was he wanted to say because she’d spent the past three days worrying that he’d died. She wanted to kiss him, to hold him. Words could wait. Words so frequently ruined everything.

“Rey.” And the spell was broken because he was smiling again.

-

He had killed Snoke, it turned out. What herd factions the murder had produced were out for his blood and either he could die facing them, or he could live and turn tail and flee to the herd he himself had fled years before.

Kylo Ren was dead, would remain dead. Ben would live again. And when the stars and moon aligned just so, the factions of Snoke’s herd coming to the valley would find no sign of him, for mounted pairs kept out of sight while the young gave chase. 

“Stop picking at it,” Rey berated him gently as he fiddled with the cleaner wrapping around the stump where his hand had once been. She took his hand and brought it to her lips and smiled at him when he nuzzled his head into her neck. He smiled at her in turn, his stump trailing down her back and back up again. 

Above them, the stars twinkled and the moon was full, and somewhere in the cypress groves a different pair was breaking their own spell.

**Author's Note:**

> [Here I am!](http://linktr.ee/crossingwinter)


End file.
